Pompton Lakes train station shop selling vintage books, vinyl records, cassettes

POMPTON LAKES —  The new Station 1 Books Vinyl & Vintage Shop inside the 1927 historic rubble stone train station building, is essentially an "ongoing garage sale," said its owner, Daniel Salsberg.

It's a really, really big garage sale with 15,000 used books, thousands of new and used records and other hidden gems, including cassette tapes and even a Walkman.

The used merchandise fills the inside of the Craftsman-style building designated as a historic site in 2004, near Lakeside and Wanaque avenues. There are even more books in the 1948 red train caboose nearby, which is where Salsberg stores military history books he acquired from a museum clean-out.

Trying to make sense of the vast selection of media for sale in the store is like perusing all of America's book shelves and record collections at once. It also feels a bit like digging through long forgotten attic boxes for buried treasure.

Salsberg recently sold the used Walkman for $40. It just so happened he had it when a young customer came into the store and asked for one. It was a little extra because it looked sort of like the one in Guardians of the Galaxy, Salsberg said. 

Cassette tapes are making a comeback. They have them, along with books and vinyl records at Station 1. They have punk and metal cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs, horror movies on VHS, comics and fanzines. They also have record players, stereos, speakers and some antique furniture.

"That's why they become rare because everyone throws them away," Salsberg said of some of the materials. "That's the good stuff. People come and ask me for punk fanzines. We don't have any right now, but I wish we did."

He does have a copy of Weird NJ #4 for sale from the summer of 1993, and old toy catalogs from the 1960s and 1970s. 

"We find some good ones like Sears but even more specific like Ideal Toys," he said. "They show the toy line from 1960 Christmas."

Salsberg also has tens of thousands of books for sale online, which are stored off-site. He's been buying and selling for 12 years under the moniker NJ Book Buyer. When he bought the train station he was hoping to consolidate his operation.

"It was supposed to be half warehouse, half retail," Salsberg said. "Retail completely took over."

At a time when more and more shopping is being done online, Salsberg went the other way and began his first brick-and-mortar retail shop in December. 

"It's a totally different experience," he said. 

Salsberg was surprised to learn there was far more demand for records than books.

"Seventy-five percent of our business is actually records," he said, of a business that was first envisioned as a book store with some records.

The sign in front of the building had to be redone to put "records" before "books." He was surprised to discover how well music CDs are still selling. 

"When we first opened I had like maybe a box of CDs and people were buying them," Salsberg said. "People are still buying CDs? That's crazy. Every single day I sell CDs now."

The historic building

Salsberg, from Boonton Township, had been searching for a unique building. He looked in upstate New York. He considered a church that also came with a graveyard, and an old canal building in Rockaway. He discovered a "for sale" sign on the 1927 train station while garage sale shopping in Pompton Lakes one day.

"It's been here for like 80 years," he said. "It's not going anywhere. It's a solid, solid building. Unfortunately, it's a little too small for my needs at the moment."

If borough officials manage to one day bring a commuter train stop back to the borough, Salsberg said he would gladly sell it back to them.

"They can have it," he says with a laugh.

The building, according to Pompton Lakes, was the township's second train depot. The first, which sat across the street, was built in 1871. The New York, Susquehanna, and Western line that passed through Pompton Lakes ran from Jersey City to Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania and Middletown, New York.

The caboose, moved to Pompton Lakes in 1988, is on sidetracks built for its display. The caboose was built by International Railway Car and Equipment Manufacturing Company of Kenton, Ohio, and bought by New York, Susquehanna, and Western. The caboose once ran on the line passing through Pompton Lakes.

The station was converted for commercial use in 1966 when commuter services ceased, according to the township's website. 

Pompton Lakes a retail destination 

Salsberg's laid back personality is perfectly suited for the shop, where customers take their time picking through record bins or bringing something in to trade or sell and to talk about their collections. He said his shop has helped to make Pompton Lakes a destination with the iconic Flipside Records just around the corner on Wanaque Avenue.

Station 1 has a huge collection of pulp fiction paperbacks for sale from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

"They are very not politically correct," Salsberg said. "It shows you what it was like at the time. But, even back then they were really on the fringe. Very interesting stuff."

There are also first edition paperbacks of books like Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot" and titles by J. D. Salinger, and Jack Kerouac. He thinks customers are picking them up mostly for the cover art to hang on walls.

"There are paperback collectors who come in with a list of things they're looking for and they'll spend hours digging through our stuff," Salsberg said. "Sometimes they'll find it. It's like that here."

Salsberg specializes in obscure books which is where he said the money is, and which tend to sell better online, he said. 

"The common books, they are everywhere," he said. "Obscure, long tail books sit in inventory for years and then someone eventually buys it. Sometimes I'll sell a book I listed 12 years ago."

There is obscure stuff in the store too, of course, but what sells in the store differs from what sells online. 

"Online we have a worldwide market," he said. "We ship all over the world." 

Salsberg said there are better prices in the store than online because he doesn't have to pay commission and deal with shipping costs.

Local New Jersey history books do well in the store and among the titles that sell over and over are Harry Potter books, Kurt Vonnegut, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid books.

Salsberg plans to scale the books down to about half so the focus is more on what people are actually buying. The old leatherbounds and the pulps will stay.

"It's surprising what we don't sell," he said. "We have a huge art book collection and we probably sell one a week. Some people come and dig. Most people just buy what they see on display."

So the Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol art books will stay, and Salsberg may expand the erotica section. 

"We sell a lot of that naughty stuff," he said.

The art of selling vinyl

Everything in the store is used except for a smattering of new records Salsberg purchases from indie distributors to help fill in the gaps. Along with regularly-priced rock and indie records, Station 1 has a large collection of dollar-bin records. There are also rare first-pressings that go for $200 to $300. Among the higher value records is a first pressing of The Who's debut album and a sealed Timothy Leary LSD record.

"Most records we sell in the store we don't sell online," he said. "Whereas it's reverse for books. Most books we sell online and not in the store. Not by design. I really try to be selling books in the store." 

He said a lot of the indie-rock 12-inch and 7-inch records Gen Xers were buying between 1990 and 1998 are likely to be in short supply and are highly desirable now. This is partly because not a lot of the records were pressed at the time, but also because everything was on CD back then. 

"Records are just like first editions of books," Salsberg said. "First pressings of records are highly desirable. If you have indie stuff you'd be shocked." 

The search for merch

Salsberg is constantly on the prowl for fresh merchandise and encourages people to bring in stuff to trade and sell. He's not looking to acquire books unless they are scholarly or very high level academic.

"It's really competitive out there to get records the way I used to get them," he said.

He acquires books mainly through private purchases, and clean-outs. 

"My typical call is a professor passes away...[and] the widow...says, 'my husband has this amazing collection. I don't know what to do with it. Can you come look at it?' And I do. If he was a professor of Roman military history or something it works out perfect because he'll have every single book on the subject."

Salsberg tried to go to an estate sale recently but he said the first 20 people in line were record buyers. 

"I was looking at a crate, this guy jumped on them," he said. "I was like, 'Really, you're that desperate?'"

He's done with estate sales. 

"It's always been hard to get quality collections," Salsberg said. "Honestly, a lot of it just goes in the dumpster. We try to get in there and pay properly for it before it goes in the garbage."

He recently acquired a significant collection of DVDs when a movie hoarder died.

"I'll never see that collection again," he said. "It was the most phenomenal collection of movies. It would've gone in the dumpster and we were able to pay thousands of dollars for it. In every corner of the house there were stacks and stacks of movies. Even on the bed. He wasn't sleeping on his bed."

He said the collection has really helped the store and attracted a lot of horror fans who bring their horror DVDs in to trade.

Salsberg also holds events at the store like film screenings. Movie-maker William Hellfire, who makes straight-to-VHS films held an event at the store where his movies are also for sale. His new project is Mail Order Murder. 

"It's beyond B-movie," Salsberg said. "They're like C-movies. Very limited release."

Salsberg struck up a relationship when the movie-maker sold a collection of VHS tapes for him. Friendships are a big part of what drives Station 1's success. Joe Smith, who prices the records for Salsberg, is an important part of the operation.

"I call him when I get a lot records," Salsberg said. "He was a customer who asked for a job and I liked the way he shopped."

It also helps that he's tall and he can reach the top shelves, Salsberg jokes.

Smith also helps run the Station 1 Instagram account, where photos and videos of records and books are posted. Instagram helps bring customers into the store, Salsberg said, especially the Instagram celebrities who shop at the store and talk about it.

There are other perks to collecting vintage books, Salsberg said. He came across a letter by the sculptor Henry Moore in a book about him tucked into a dust jacket. His daughter also found $75 in a book once. 

Follow Jai Agnish on Twitter: @JaiAgnish. Email: agnish@northjersey.com.